Despite months of ongoing protests and companies enforcing stricter travel policies on Hong Kong – to the point where some MNCs have banned business trips there, confidence in the city and its status as a vital business centre remains, according to corporate travel managers and suppliers alike.
- Negotiated hotel rates to hold
- “No major impact” on Informa Markets’ B2B events the past months
- HRS projects growth for business travel to Hong Kong this year
Despite months of ongoing protests and companies enforcing stricter travel policies on Hong Kong – to the point where some MNCs have banned business trips there, confidence in the city and its status as a vital business centre remains, according to corporate travel managers and suppliers alike.
With contracts for air and hotel programmes locked in place for anywhere between one and more years, one corporate travel manager in the pharmaceuticals sector told TTGmice that “there is no change” and “no renegotiation of hotel rates”.
“In the early days (Hong Kong protests started in June 2019), one meeting was evacuated and the hotel waived the cancellation charge,” he recalled, but added that “business fallout has been limited”.
He continued: “We will go back to Hong Kong and it will be business as usual. Our programmes start in April, and depending on what RFPs we are negotiating, we will do what is right by the company. That means we will negotiate harder and work with our consultants if the market generally is soft.”
For Informa Markets – an organiser of numerous consumer and tradeshows in Hong Kong – none of its events were cancelled, according to Benson Tang, executive director, corporate travel.
While consumer show attendance did drop some 10 to 15 per cent because of MTR closures and resulting traffic congestion, there was no major impact on Informa Markets’ B2B events, he noted.
Tang commented that compared to leisure travel, where numbers were down some 50 per cent and average occupancy was “significantly affected”, five-star hotels in the central exhibition and convention district were less impacted, and “softened maybe between 10 and 20 per cent”.
“Business is still ongoing. Business is not running away from Hong Kong and I do not see a drop in confidence,” he observed, pointing to the successful secondary listing of Alibaba in Hong Kong at the end of November 2019.
“There may be isolated cases (of event cancellations), but I do not see a trend where businesses are considering doing less in Hong Kong or moving their regional headquarters in China. The doors remain open,” Tang noted.
Summarising 2019’s performance, Frederic Dumoulin, Asia-Pacific senior vice president of Hotel Solutions at HRS, said there was a downturn in the cumulative volume “we would typically see from clients in the second half of the year”. But he noted the impact of the downturn was mitigated by the relatively strong first six months of 2019.
Dumoulin added: “The crisis has presented the seedlings of opportunity for both the hotels and corporates we work with. Hotels, facing uncertain forecasts, are much more willing to engage in conversation, be flexible about room rates, and consider RFPs from a larger number of corporates. The vast majority of our clients that travel to Hong Kong still plan to do so in 2020, and this environment has served to open doors of communication on rates and amenities that may not have been available in years gone by.”
He opined: “Frankly, hotels are more concerned about trade issues impacting both global metrics and China/US specifically. Hoteliers are hopeful there will be an end to the protests in early-2020, and they are positioning themselves to be ready to welcome back the traditional volume of corporate travellers as soon as possible.
Hence, HRS does not see any wide-scale reduction in projected volume for international clients going to Hong Kong in 2020. “In fact, we are projecting growth,” Dumoulin stated.
At press time, CWT’s general manager, South-east Asia and Hong Kong, Sim Kian Peng, said the TMC still sensed caution among companies in allowing business travel to Hong Kong, and booking meetings and events in the city.
Sim commented: “For 2020, companies are in a wait-and-see mode – but given Hong Kong’s importance as a business destination, there is a high degree of hope that tensions will de-escalate.
Expressing confidence in the new Hong Kong Tourism Board leadership, Tang told TTGmice the NTO and industry partners have been working together on a “revival plan”, but launching the programme was a matter of timing it right to maximise the investment.
For now, the 2020 outlook for Hong Kong remains cautiously optimistic.
